“We just wanted to live as normal people and feel like we were human; it didn’t matter where we were … But the Canadian government was very generous with us,” Hannof said. He became a Canadian citizen in 2021. Today, he goes by Mike and works as a car salesman in London, Ont. 

 But when the Assad regime collapsed last December, Hannof suddenly had the opportunity to return to his beloved Homs, where he had maintained close contact with his extended family all along. Many Syrian-Canadians like him are now faced with a reckoning — whether home is the life they built in Canada over the last decade, or the one they were forced to leave behind. But even for the most eager returnees, the ousting of Assad has not by itself provided jobs to reclaim, homes to return to, or the confidence that it’s safe to return. 

 “The country is not going to be rebuilt without our tools, our education, our experience and our energy,” said Celine Kasem, a Syrian-Canadian activist who recently moved back to Damascus. “After 14 years of war, the people in Syria are exhausted, and now it’s our turn to pay back their sacrifice and participate in the rebuilding of the country.”

What began as a peaceful uprising against the Assad regime devolved into total war in late 2011. It was here, in Baba Amr, where that line was crossed, as the neighbourhood became one of the first areas to fall under rebel control. In February 2012, the regime responded with the full force of its military to bombard and besiege the neighbourhood.

“After we heard the tanks coming and started hearing the news that Baba Amr is going to be surrounded … that’s when my dad was shot and killed in another neighbourhood in Homs,” Hannof said with a grimace. 

 His family then fled the city and was scattered around the globe, ending up in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Germany. Hannof found refuge in Canada. During the fall 2015 federal election campaign, eventual victor Justin Trudeau pledged to admit 25,000 Syrian refugees. “By December, he started to fulfil this promise, and we were very lucky to be some of the first refugees to come,” Hannof said.  

When he arrived in London, he had just one dream: to continue his studies. “I tried to enrol in a high school, but I didn’t speak English, not even a single word. I was very lucky to do extra courses, and I completed high school in two and a half years,” he said. 

Thirteen years after fleeing Homs, Hannof sat down with The Star in his uncle’s home on a block of partially destroyed and halfway reconstructed buildings. “I’m just visiting for two weeks to see the new city, after everything, and to see if it’s safe to move back and start a business or live here,” he said. He has since demolished the husk of his old home and begun constructing a sweets shop in its place, which his uncle will manage, tethering him to Homs as he returns to his job in Ontario. 

“Canada offers many opportunities, but rising housing and living costs can make long-term planning difficult. While I don’t have immediate plans to move (back to Syria), I remain open to where life may lead,” he said. 

Ahmad Khanji spent his formative years in Damascus and his thirties in Toronto. “I love the way of life (in Canada). But all my memories and key pillars that shaped who I am were made and manufactured in Syria,” said Khanji, who became a Canadian citizen in 2021, at age 39. Khanji arrived in Canada in 2016 and spent several years in Toronto working on projects to help Syrians like himself settle into Canadian life. A decade later, he is struggling to do the same in his home country.

Khamji says that if he found a decent job in Damascus, he’d go back to Syria “tomorrow, for good.” He has spent the last year between Damascus and Toronto, laying the foundation for his new life in the latter. “I’m an (unmarried) man, so I have more freedom in making my decisions. But there are very few work opportunities for me at the moment (in Syria), which is the deciding factor,” he said. 

The decision is much more complicated for those with families and dependants. Amer Maamari arrived in Canada on Dec. 30, 2015, with his pregnant wife and young son. His kids are 13 and 10 now — the whole family are Canadian citizens. 

“The oldest one speaks some Arabic, but not the youngest, who was born here. My wife doesn’t want to go back. She said that she’s not going to sacrifice my kids’ future by going there,” he said. Maamari estimates that, within his community of Syrian-Canadians, 80 per cent of men are interested in going back to Syria, but only 20 per cent of women. 

“Here in Canada, women have the freedom to choose,” said Maamari, who is Catholic. “A Muslim woman can wear the hijab, the free woman, she can be free.” Meanwhile, since Ahmed al-Sharaa took power in Syria, the country’s political order has shifted decisively toward Sunni Islamist factions, raising concerns among religious minorities about their place in the country’s future. 

 But Syria has not been overtaken by Islamic rule, as many have feared. On the streets of Damascus or Aleppo, familiar signs of pluralism remain: church bells alongside the Islamic call to prayer, covered and uncovered women, clerics in many robes — and even a few bars. 

 “I do feel safe as a woman in Syria; I feel like I can walk home at night, I can go out with my friends. In the summer, we were swimming and all of that, it’s been very safe in my experience,” said Kasem, a Sunni Muslim.

 The country has, however, been rocked by waves of sectarian violence, jihadist attacks, an expanded Israeli occupation in the south, and more. but Khanji remains cautiously optimistic about Syria’s trajectory. “With the support the leadership is getting — from the Americans, Europeans, Gulf States, and Turkey — I think Syria is on a good path toward a prosperous future,” Khanji said, who holds a master’s degree in postwar recovery studies. 

 Khanji has split his time between Damascus and Toronto over the past year, an arrangement only made possible by staying with his parents in Syria while continuing to cover expenses in Toronto. Khanji will bring his wife, Bushra, to Canada for her first ever visit to the country in a few months. But where they end up long term, he says, is still undetermined. “this vague future for Syria is reflected in this vague future for us as individuals,” he said.  

Displacement has shaped the Kasem family for generations, explains Celine’s father, Tambi Kasem, from their family home in Whitby. His great-grandfather, an Armenian exiled from modern-day Turkey, settled in Syria, where he met Tambi’s great-grandmother, a Circassian exiled from modern-day Russia.  

“Canada did for my kids what Syria did for my great-grandfather, and that really touched my heart,” he said. “Celine came (to Canada) in the eighth grade, and I like the values (my kids) learned here; the human values. When we couldn’t go back to Syria, Canada opened her heart, and received (us) with thousands of other Syrians,” he said.

Tambi Kasem says the Syrian flag “meant nothing for me, all my life,” as it represented the repression and terror of the Assad regime, and he was likewise unable to comprehend the feeling of national pride. “It was like someone who was blind, and you are trying to tell him about the trees and how beautiful (they are) … but he is blind, and whatever you try to explain to him, he will never understand.”

But when the regime collapsed last year, he says the idea of belonging — once abstract to him — suddenly became intelligible. “I grew up in Syria, I lived in Saudi Arabia and USA. All these societies made me (who I am), but it’s very important for every human being to feel that he belongs to a piece of land,” he said. 

“Here in Canada, we are just a number; there is too much competition. No one knows me, and no one wants to know me,” Maamari said. “But in your own country, you are known, people can make connections and help you do all kinds of things.”

Back in Homs, Hannof reunited with his grandmother, met nieces and nephews for the first time, and travelled to parts of Syria that he had never been able to visit as a child. “I was born here, so it’s where I belong, even if I have my Canadian citizenship. I believe everyone will say the same thing about their own country. Even if I had one or 10 citizenships, I’d still go back here,” Hannof said. 

Fin de Pencier is a journalist, photographer, and filmmaker from Toronto.